The reader expressed doubts about the correctness of the three-digit word combination that he encountered: one-digit, two-digit, etc., in his opinion, only a number can be used, but not a word.

Of course, you can limit your response to this to quotations from dictionaries. For example, from the Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language by S. I. Ozhegov and N. Yu. Shvedova: "Unambiguous" ... 2. Having only one meaning. An unambiguous word..."; "Single-digit" ... Indicated by a single digit. A single-digit number..."; "Two-digit"... Consisting of two digits. A two-digit number..."; "Two-digit"... having two values. Two-digit expression..."; "Multi-digit" ... About a number: consisting of many numeric characters. A multi-digit number..."; "Multi-valued"... Having many values. A multi-valued word...".

If there are homonyms unambiguous and unambiguous, two-digit and two-digit, multi-digit and multi-valued, then why can't there be homonyms three-digit and three-digit, etc., on the same grounds? The dictionary is not required to register all of them. The dictionary has a right to rely on the smartness of its users.

The reader's doubt allows, or rather requires, to expand the answer.

For example, the word seven hundred. This is a single word sign that names a certain number; the Russian quantitative numeral. The number named by this word can be represented by digital signs (digits) - 700. And this is a hieroglyph. It is international: it is equally understood by people who speak different languages, but pronounced as a numeral of their native language. And if a digit is a sign (a digit has, as a sign should in its semiotic sense, two sides: material, visible, and ideal - a numerical value), then the phonemes that make up the numeral, and the letters (as such) that convey this numeral, are not signs. When they say and write a two-digit, three-digit, etc. number, they mean the number of digits that visually convey and denote the number. The second part of these complex adjectives is formally formed from the base of the word meaning-

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It is essentially a sign from the root. This is a case of a falsely oriented word-forming internal form of a word (let me remind you: the internal form can be word-forming, semantic, or sound).

When they say and write that a certain word is not unambiguous, but polysemous, they mean that it has more than one meaning.These complex adjectives are formed both formally and essentially from the basis of the word meaning. They have a correctly orienting internal form.

Once at a seminar, I invited students to discuss this case of homonymity; the student said that it is more accurate to use the adjective multi-sign in relation to a number. Yes, such usage would remove the confusing homonymy: this word has a correctly orienting internal form. And the polysemy of the number and the polysemy of the word, the three-signedness and the three-signedness would peacefully coexist, i.e. homonymy would be replaced by a complete paronymy.

It is easier to make clarifications in terminology than in non-specialized areas of vocabulary: there are much fewer users, it is easier to agree here. V. G. Belinsky wrote idiocies of the language, we speak and write idioms. 19th-century linguists called etymology what has long been called morphology. In the XX century, they got rid of the homonymy dialectical and dialectical, starting to use dialect (dialect word, dialect differences), leaving dialectical to philosophical terminology. However, some falsely orienting terms are so deeply embedded that they do not dare to "force" them, they do not replace them with correctly orienting ones, for example, the lightning rod has not given way to the lightning rod.

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